March 24, 2013

On Lying: My School of Life secular sermon

It has been a thrill to put together a secular
Sermon for the first School of Life series here in Melbourne. Under the rubric
of lying, I had permission to pull together a lot of interests that I
don’t usually get to explore in one piece: apes, evolution, the worldwide flood of information, bad journalism,
good journalism and the idea of the
witness. To make it more perfect, the Sermon took place at the Melbourne Zoo.

For anyone interested in exploring these ideas further:

If you want some more examples about the exponential rise of information in the world, start here.

I spoke about apes and deception. Here’s a description of
the experiment I mentioned, plus some pages about other amazing ape behavior,
like complex tool use, puzzle-solving and cooperation. Click tab 7 for deception.

Here’s a link to a Monthly article I wrote about real
estate. As part of my reporting for the article I called to confirm that the
young first time home buyer mentioned in the piece did in fact work for the
real estate firm also mentioned in the piece—she did. Neither she nor her boss were happy to talk to me. This blog post is about another first home buyer who
also happens to be a real estate agent—even though his profession was not mentioned in the
original article. Two of the "lies of omission" mentioned in the Sermon were, to the best of my knowledge, first reported at this blog.

This article from Canada's The Globe and Mail details an investigation into realtors posing as buyers. It includes links to the Canadian blogs that first uncovered the lie.

I came across many other examples of this phenomenon in a
variety of blogs and traditional media. Check out macrobusiness.com for some
trenchant, non-traditional analysis of real estate, as well as many other
aspects of our financial lives. Bubblepedia has an occasionaly lively forum. Note that because much of their content is commentary, some blogs have wild language and awful manners, including distasteful sexism of a kind you'd be hard-pressed to find
in the traditional media. These blogs link to similar sites in other
countries.

Not sure where to look for guidance about the biggest financial decision in your life? Why not consult the movement of the planets. Luckily Jupiter is in Cancer in 2013 making "the property market boom again." Click the byline of this piece in The Australian. It will take you to "The world's leading luxury astrology company," and in case you missed it, same thing again at news.com.au.

The Los Angeles Times, for instance, published 256 stories longer than 2,000 words last year, compared to 1,776 in 2003—a drop of 86 percent, according to searches of the Factiva database.

When it comes to stories longer than 3,000 words, the three papers showed even sharper declines. The WSJ’s total is down 70 percent to 25 stories, from 87 a decade ago, and theLA Times down fully 90 percent to 34 from 368.

The Wall Street Journal, which pioneered the longform narrative in American newspapers, published 35 percent fewer stories over 2,000 words last year from a decade ago, 468 from 721.

I couldn't find similar surveys for Australian journalism,
but my experience working in Australia has been very similar to
my US experience—word length is being cut across the board, and on the reader side, there’s a lot
of anger connected to the perception that the media doesn’t care to get its
facts right.

TrackBack

Books

We are doomed to repeat history if we fail to learn from it, but how are we affected by the forces that are invisible to us? In The Invisible History of the Human Race
Christine Kenneally draws on cutting-edge research to reveal how both historical artifacts and DNA tell us where we come from and where we may be going. From fateful, ancient encounters to modern mass migrations and medical diagnoses, Kenneally explains how the forces that shaped the history of the world ultimately shape each human who inhabits it.

A Los Angeles Times Book Prize finalist, The First Word is about the quest for the origins of human language. Although language is a distinctly human gift, it leaves no permanent trace and its evolution has long been a mystery. It is only in the last fifteen years that we have begun to understand how language came into being.
The First Word follows two intertwined narratives. The first is an account of how the random and layered processes of evolution wound together to produce a talking animal: us. The second addresses why language evolution was considered a scientific taboo for more than a hundred years and why scientists are at last able to explore the subject.

from THE BOSTON GLOBE"Kenneally's reporting and interpretation of this research, whose implications for the study of language and human nature are immense, occupy center stage in 'The First Word' and generate real excitement on the page."

from THE CHARLOTTE OBSERVER"...a cogent and often compelling account... As Kenneally dissects each scholar's theory, a wonderful evolution occurs on the pages: She explains, understatedly, what it means to be part of human nature."

from THE NEW YORK TIMES[A] lucid survey of this expanding field... covers an enormous expanse of ground as she brings the reader up to date on developments in a wide variety of disciplines touching on language evolution... explains difficult ideas concisely and clearly... scrupulously fair-minded... zeroes in on a host of fascinating experiments.

from THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW"[The] scientists who study the origins of language are a passionate, fractious bunch, and you don’t have to be an egghead to be tantalized by the questions that drive their research: how and when did we learn to speak, and to what extent is language a uniquely human attribute?... Much of what [Kenneally] describes is fascinating."

Book list picks

The Plain DealerSummer's bliss: Our picks for reading that will carry you away, July 2008

Los Angeles TimesNominated in the Science and Technology category of the Los Angeles Times Books Prize, February 28, 2007

Advance praise

Steven Pinker"A clear and splendidly written account of a new field of research on a central question about the human species."

Steven Johnson"'The First Word' is a rare and delightful mix: both a probing exploration of one of the great remaining mysteries of life, and a riveting story of the battles and breakthroughs that drive scientific progress."

CHRISTINE KENNEALLY

Christine Kenneally is an award-winning journalist and author who has written for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Slate, Time, New Scientist, The Monthly, and other publications. Her books, The Invisible History of the Human Race: How DNA and History Shape Our Identities and Our Futures and The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language, are published by Viking Penguin. Before becoming a reporter, she received a Ph.D. in linguistics from Cambridge University and a B.A. (Hons) in English and Linguistics from Melbourne University. She was born and raised in Melbourne, Australia, and has lived in England, Iowa, and Brooklyn, New York (ckenneally at ckenneally dot com). She is currently a contributing editor for Buzzfeed News.

Bookforum

The Rational Optimist by Matt RidleyIt seems foolish, if not downright irresponsible to feel good about the future in 2010. The disasters of the last decade piled up fast, and apocalyptic fear is now a standard ingredient in the morning commute. But what should one prepare for first? September 11-style attacks, oil spills, climate change, the death of languages, the last days of the polar bears, or the dark, multifarious effects of globalization?

New Scientist

Drawing the Map of Life by Victor McElhenyTo an outsider, the Human Genome Project looks like a scientific Everest: people counting genes just because they are there. Now, 10 years since the first draft sequence was revealed, a widespread debate has arisen about its impact.

Language LessonsWhat if the diversity of languages is the key to understanding human communication?

Adam's Tongue by Derek Bickerton & Finding Our Tongue by Dean FalkWhy is it that 20th-century physicists could ask some of the most grandiose questions in science, but if a researcher wondered aloud where language came from, the response was derisive at best. Not only can you not answer the question, they were told, you shouldn't even ask.

Freedom from selection lets genes get creativeWe tend to think of evolution as a brutal race and behavioural complexity as a brilliant strategy that is honed by the competition. But what if biology doesn't always work that way? What if nature's most intricate creations were not painstakingly assembled but more casually dreamed up?

So you think humans are unique?We are not the only species that feels emotions, empathises with others or abides by a moral code. Neither are we the only ones with personalities, cultures and the ability to design and use tools. Yet we have steadfastly clung to the notion that one attribute, at least, makes us unique...